These days, with deep sorrow and bitterness, we went to the cemetery to say goodbye to the body of an anarchist comrade who died in a work accident.
An explosive device was unable to keep him away from all of us 13 years ago, when it exploded while he was installing it.
He survived, despite the severity of his injuries, and spent more than 80 days in hospital, fighting to stay alive. His body was left with deep mutilations and scars… and he kept fighting. He faced a trial, media exposure to the point of exhaustion, was convicted and kept fighting.
He stole 13 years from death and in that time he built various projects, spaces, libraries, activities, did and undid, got closer to comrades, distanced himself from others, but an accident at work separated Tortuga from all of us.
On 14 August 2010, the South Prosecutor’s Office issued arrest warrants and simultaneous raids, as well as the eviction of a squatted space. The Prosecutor’s Office was seeking to dismantle a fictitious illicit association created in their twisted mercenary minds. They were after those behind the installation of a series of explosive devices that had come to disrupt the peace of the powerful.
14 comrades were presented as guilty and exposed to the legal and media trial, one comrade managed to evade that move, beginning a long journey in clandestinity, which ended 2 years and 3 months later, on November 19, 2012, for the last audience in the trial against Tortuga. The date, by the way, was not a coincidence, it was a wink between accomplices.
Dates, they say, are looked for and found, and so the twists and turns of life and its paths made us go to say goodbye to you on 14 August…
The same August that made us meet so many times around the memory of the comrades Sacco and Vanzetti, a memory that gave birth to a squatted space and a Library where we met, in whose activities we collectively and individually sharpened our ideas/practices, in tension and debate, outbursts and laughter, anger, joy and anarchist comradeship….
Today, ironically, through the same official press that vomited against Tortuga after the accident in 2011, that exhibited him as a war trophy and filled him with insults and infamies, part of his blood family is once again trying to kidnap the comrade’s life.
They invent a Tortuga ‘reintegrated into society’, ‘economically successful’ and how this is supposed to have brought ruptures with his anarchist comrades, with Anarchy itself, insinuating regret on his part and jealousy of his comrades.
In the same medium of power’s spokesmanship, there are those who invent that for us, comrades of the diffuse anarchic environment, Tortuga is a ‘hero’, but that at the same time, our ‘jealousy’ or reproaches did not allow him to heal, to manage his anger or frustration after the accident. It accuses us of not knowing him and of wanting to manipulate him.
That someone who claims to love Tortuga should express himself this way about him, minimizing his ideas and analysis, trying to extinguish his contribution to Anarchy, disrespecting his memory, while it saddens us, does not surprise us, it is part of the misery that has historically been poured on comrades by those family-blood circles that do not respect, nor know who they claim to love.
We call on comrades everywhere to contribute to the defense of our departed anarchist brothers and sisters, that neither the voice nor the reinterpretation of those who defend power be imposed. The task of memory is ongoing and we can all contribute to it.
… ‘Pain fills our hearts at this time, but it is important not to lower our moral, not to fall into the numbness that can come with the loss of a brother. We must not forget that he died with his eyes fixed on his target. And that fact must shake us, it must help us to open our eyes.
We are at war, the blows will be many, in various forms, but a warrior becomes a warrior when he/she does not stop, when he/she does not give up, when he/she makes his/her life, among other things, a continuous overcoming of obstacles.
The rawness of death hits us and the hurricane is such that at times it is hard to believe that it is happening. Death or prison is not just a slogan, today for us it is a phrase tattooed in blood and fire…’…
We wrote it on 22 May 2009, after Mauri’s death and the hunt unleashed in revenge. And today those words are calling us back.
How much we talk about Mauri and his departure with Tortuga, how much we fed back, feeding the fire that is memory, sharing sadness or joy, easing the weight between comrades, even with the pass of time, which does not dissolve any absence, but only teaches us to live with it, sometimes hiding the pain in front of others…
In the attempt to try to assimilate the physical departure of comrade Tortuga, comes the news of the loss of another anarchist comrade, Belén Navarrete, who contributed and gave life to Anarchy in different ways and with different tools, with a hunger for learning, battling against social passivity and putting authority, legality and comfort in tension.
How the loss of comrades hurts, how it explodes hundreds of artefacts deep in the spirit. No black heart remains indifferent… because the paths of confrontation always cross.
Choosing the life of fight, the difficult life, with its beauties and bitterness, takes us away from ‘normal’ people and makes us meet and cross paths with complex comrades, with their lights and shadows, but with a sincere desire to fight against power and the relationships that sustain it.
It can be a bitter and complex life, that’s one way of looking at it, for us, it’s the only way to live, the only way to find the beauty in which everything makes sense, living Anarchy, overcoming limits, tensing our own existence, embracing chaos.
The depth or complexity of feelings in the face of a departure can also become a cage, suffocating, causing companions to isolate themselves or to build walls around themselves that are impossible for others to climb.
There are those who can feel lonely in their loneliness, cutting complicit and supportive ties…we must know how to destroy this dynamic that locks us into our particular and bitter experience and that ultimately always benefits power and its various representatives. ‘That a comrade is not alone’ also depends on the battle of ourselves.
… ‘Cheer up comrades and be on guard. They will come for us, sooner or later, of that we have no doubt. So it is important that the ruthless critique of the established order comes alive and spreads like the black plague…’ …
We hope that he will be able to join beyond any star, with his conspiratorial energy, that group of comrades who loved each other so much in life, Mauri, Angry and Tortuga; that they will undertake new flashes together with Belén, together with all that large sea of our departed brothers and sisters.
How much we learn from you, dear comrade Luisa Toledo, from the sharpness of your gaze and the accuracy of your reflection, how much we learn from the depth of your words in the face of each new death.
Nobody is forgotten, long live the black memory!
Never defeated, never regretted.
Antiauthoritarian Library Sacco and Vanzetti
End of August 2024, 97 years after the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.